London's eerie choices for the 2012 games prompt questions about what makes a successful mascot. From the cute and cuddly to the creepy, absurd, and ethically questionable, a visual survey of past Olympic mascots.

Phevos and Athena, Athens 2004

For their first games in the modern era since 1896, the Greeks sought to emphasize their connection to the ancient games by basing their mascots on a figurine from thousands of years ago, and naming them after the Greek gods Phevos and Athena. Though the Athens Organizing Committee claimed that the mascots represented “participation, brotherhood, equality, cooperation, fair play [and] the everlasting Greek value of human scale,” for many their odd, amorphous shape evoked the wrong part of the human anatomy, drawing criticism for resembling “animated condoms” or, in the words NBC Olympic host Bob Costas, “a genetic experiment gone horribly, ghastly wrong.”